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| Jeff Bridges in Winter Kills |
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eli Wallach, Sterling Hayden, Dorothy Malone, Tomas Milian, Belinda Bauer, Ralph Meeker, Toshiro Mifune, Richard Boone, David Spielberg, Joe Spinell, Elizabeth Taylor. Screenplay: William Richert, based on a novel by Richard Condon. Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond. Production design: Robert F. Boyle. Film editing: David Bretherton. Music: Maurice Jarre.
Every conspiracy thriller has to be judged by the standard set by John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and that includes Jonathan Demme's ill-advised 2004 remake. What makes William Richert's Winter Kills such an obvious target for comparison is that it's based on a novel by Richard Condon, who also wrote the novel on which Frankenheimer's film was based. The difference between Frankenheimer's film and Richert's is that although both deal with a political assassination, The Manchurian Candidate appeared a year before the killing of John F. Kennedy and Winter Kills a decade and a half later. Frankenheimer's movie felt somehow so prophetic that it actually disappeared from circulation for years. Richert's is obviously modeled on the conspiracy and cover-up theories that have always surrounded the Kennedy assassination. Winter Kills is stuffed with stars, some of them, like the brief cameos by Sterling Hayden, Toshiro Mifune, and an unbilled Elizabeth Taylor, amounting to stunt casting. Its chief virtue is a reliably solid and attractive performance by Jeff Bridges as the half-brother of an assassinated president, who stumbles across a clue that seems to implicate their father, a billionaire played with sinister charm by John Huston. Even though everyone that Bridges's character comes in contact with seems to get killed, there's no real urgency driving the film, and the result is a puzzle with no payoff.
